Comparing young Caruana's development to Sevian and Xiong

For any player who grew up in the United States, it is quite easy to pull up their entire tournament history on the USCF website and parse the data. First, an overview of Fabiano Caruana's progress as a youngster. You'll find nothing earth-shattering here. Nobody will be surprised that Caruana started young, played a lot of chess as a kid, and that his rating shot up quickly. Keep in mind these are USCF ratings which tend to be slightly higher than FIDE.

FABIANO CARUANA

Age

Rated events played

Rating at end of year

Notes

5

3

584

6

77

1279

7

74

1542

8

100

1926

9

155

2067

10

154

2134

11

118

2264

12*

49+

2364

Moved to Italy

13

9+

2457

14

6+

2569

15

7+

2672

Two of the strongest juniors in the world right now are fellow Americans Samuel Sevian and Jeffery Xiong. Here are their charts compared to Caruana's.

SAMUEL SEVIAN

Age

Rated events played

End of year rating

5

11

886

6

24

1453

7

32

1889

8

28

2123

9

29

2206

10

18

2299

11

15

2471

12

9

2485

13

15

2626

14

13

2671

JEFFERY XIONG

Age

Rated events played

End of year rating

6

9

1229

7

38

1722

8

38

2062

9

44

2153

10

31

2337

11

30

2434

12

34

2454

13

36

2569

14

37

2639

Two things about Caruana's successors: they got better at a younger age than Caruana, and they did it while playing considerably fewer events.
This is an analysis of so few players that one probably shouldn't really act like the data means much. And if it means anything, it's probably just a rather simple conclusion: modern youngsters likely supplement their tournament play with online play more than ever before. Again, nothing earth-shattering. But I thought the huge disparity in numbers was interesting, along with Caruana's prodigious (!) amount of rated play in general.